Quote:In our Sandy Bridge review I pointed out that Intel was unfortunately very conservative in one area of the platform: its chipset. Although the 6-series chipset finally brought native 6Gbps SATA to Intel platforms it failed to fix issues with 23.976 fps video playback.

Did you verify the date on that article? It's more than a year ago. In electronics, 1+ year can be eternity....

Is there any reason to go for more GPU power as an A6-3500 can provide? I'm currently split between going with an A6-3500 or taking an Intel CPU with a lower TDP (f.e. a 630T) and a GPU like a 6450, 6570 or even an 7750. Budget isn't much of an issue, the TV I'm going to buy will probably cost between 2-3k so I want the best possible experience I can get.

(2012-04-23 19:47)Maxily Wrote: Is there any reason to go for more GPU power as an A6-3500 can provide? I'm currently split between going with an A6-3500 or taking an Intel CPU with a lower TDP (f.e. a 630T) and a GPU like a 6450, 6570 or even an 7750. Budget isn't much of an issue, the TV I'm going to buy will probably cost between 2-3k so I want the best possible experience I can get.

If you do a lot of blu-ray transcoding, ripping, editing video, etc in the background while watching blu-ray in full 1080P and bitstreaming HD audio, you want a stronger CPU. It'll get the job done a lot faster.....

You don't need a discrete GPU either. You can opt for this "Intel Core i3-2125 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz" powerful and yet low TDP Intel CPU......with Intel 3.3GHz cores and HD3000, it should be able to playback blu-ray in 1080P and bitstreaming HD audio........